The data I have seen does not corroborate this — in fact exactly the opposite.

According to [0] Sweden has 11,445 cases and 1,033 deaths (CFR: 9%) as of 6pm PT 4/14. For a population of 10.3 million [1], this is a confirmed infection rate of 0.11%.

According to [2] California has 23,338 cases and 758 deaths (CFR: 3.2%) as of 6pm PT 4/14. For a population of 39.5 million [3], this is a confirmed infection rate of 0.06%.

By all accounts, Sweden is being hit far harder by this virus than California or Sweden’s own neighbors are, and based on this evidence it is reasonable to infer that the distancing measures or lack thereof have an effect on transmission.

[0] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden

[2] https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/Immunization...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California

52% of Swedish households are 1 person households[1] so they were sort of self-isolating by default. As you can see from the other replies, that wasn't enough to keep transmission at bay.

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/D...

Sweden also has a fairly low population density outside its larger cities, as well as a relatively small (10M) population. And its measures aren't without criticism - consider they have 100 deaths per 1M people, which places them 10th on countries with over 1K cases.

There's states in the US with similar densities; I'd imagine those would be spared most of the deaths, even if stricter measures weren't implemented, but what about the coasts?

Honestly, the US, large and heterogenous as it is, should implement different measures per state. It's obvious to me that what works for some places may not work for others so well.

Even if you look at Germany, you will see huge regional differences. If you look at the map of the positive tested, you can clearly see spikes in the huge cities (Berlin, Hamburg, München) and in densely populated regions. You can also still see that the infection density is higher around the places of initial infections (Bavaria for example, many skiing tourists who got infected in Austria/Italy). On the other side, there are less dense populated regions with a noticeably smaller infection rate.

And interestingly, those on holiday seem to have brought it back at a much greater rate than business travelers. E.g. Frankfurt isn't an epicenter despite having the largest airport and a lot of business travel, esp. to China. Many of the early outbreaks can be traced back to either Italy or Austria during Easter holidays. And that's where centers of infection remain.

It's still early enough in the pandemic that the effect you're seeing here might only be that denser areas get it first, not that they get it worse. People in less dense areas do still regularly come in close contact with other people, so there is the potential for the virus to spread there even if the people live spread out on farms or whatever.

Given it a few more months and I suspect that the differences between the urbs and suburbs will be less.

Look at their fatality rate compared to other European countries. Also read the recent news about change of approach of Sweden and The Netherlands. Read about the current situation of the UK and go back in time an look at their initial response vs e.g. Germany. Compare the two. Lockdowns are saving lifes.

Sweden: https://imperialcollegelondon.github.io/covid19estimates/#/d...

Greece: https://imperialcollegelondon.github.io/covid19estimates/#/d...

Where would you rather be?

It is. The ongoing data already show it. And in another month or two it's going to be really obvious how much worse they were hit by countries that locked down sooner (I say sooner because at this rate it seems inevitable that Sweden will be forced into some form of lockdown too, just tragically too late to save many tens of thousands of lives). Let's regroup in a couple months and see precisely how poorly their strategy turned out.

A Forbes headline from today reads "Sweden: 22 Scientists Say Coronavirus Strategy Has Failed As Deaths Top 1,000"

Sweden has the highest death rate per capita of all developed nations.

While current Swedish strategy carries a high risk of bringing it to that point, that statement is absolutely false right now. Swedish deaths per 1 million are currently 102, significantly lower than Spain (397), Italy (348), France (241), Belgium (383), etc.

Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

Where is that stat? The sources I have seen do not show that.

The stat that they're specifically referring to is the case fatality rate, but that has a lot more to do with the denominator (Sweden's utter failure to test) than the numerator (actual number of deaths).

I'd like to believe that Belgium, Italy, France and others in Europe are also developed.